


Balance of Interests

by Cynara



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Gen, Irene Adler - Freeform, John Watson - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynara/pseuds/Cynara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WWII is approaching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balance of Interests

I did it for my country. They are damning words for anyone that comes to need them in either utterance or thought. While much of my life has been dedicated to the British government, generally I've not needed that canard. My brother seems to be an exception so often.

My little brother. Truly he was that when he was born, though not so small as say Newton. Sherlock was only a few months early. I doubt he even knows that. Mother insisted we mark his birthday when it would have been, not as it actually happened. I only know because for a time it wasn't certain Mother would live, and I'd been sent for at school.

I saw it within moments of meeting my brother's companion that there was an unbridged gap between them, a mutual regard for the other left unmentioned. Now, I suppose I could say that morality stayed me from making the observation. Lies are never so dangerous as when told to ones self. Had I thought it would prove useful, I might have done anything with that knowledge.

Instead, I didn't mention it to my brother. In fact, on the one occasion, delirious mind you, he confided to me his hopeless longing, I provided false council, agreeing with him contrary to the evidence that had escaped him.

Had I already decided I would need him as an agent? Unplanned as the results were, they were perfect for my eventual needs. He was more than willing to disappear once Doctor Watson married. I think he might have stayed a field operative indefinitely had he not received word of Watson's bereavement.

The somewhat precipitous courtship has never been explained to me, though certain particulars are suggestive. First, that Irene Adler's little situation played out only a few months before Watson's wedding, and furthermore that it struck Watson so that it was the next story he wrote after the tale in which he met his wife. I might speculate, since I'll unlikely ever be privy to the answer, that Watson misjudged Holmes' temperament, either seeing more to my brother's involvement with that woman, or rather less.

I suppose I shouldn't think of her so; she's rather remarkable. Her strategy is excellent. I suppose the fault I find is how much she dares without any reason beyond her own desires. She wanted adventure and became the mistress of a Romanov, causing a potential crisis of international proportions, had it ever become generally known. She wanted out of Russia safely, so she seduced my brother to insure herself of a protector. Talented and unstoppable.

And now, I've word about her grandson. I'd kept a professional eye on his father, chary of the ramifications should he be brought forth as an heir to the murdered Romanovs. Nicholas takes after his mother, in so much that he's weathered the Revolution, the civil wars and the internecine soviets.

I'm going to do something for my country. I'm going to deposit this picture, and the other pursuant documents in the darkest safe at my club, where they cannot be retrieved until 1954. I fear they will have no use.

One little boy against a war.

I wonder if She ever doubted whom was the father of her eldest children?


End file.
